Bassline

“In music theory, the bass note of a chord is the lowest note played or notated. If there are multiple voices it is the note played or notated in the lowest voice.” 

- Wikipedia

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Other people refer to it as the bassline.  It is that thing that is lying under the layers of the song.  It is the infrastructure that everything else seems to hang.  Musicians can identify whether or not a song is likely to be jazz, blues, rock, funk, electronic, etc., by the bassline or bass note signature of a song.

I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about the bass note being the deepest, truest, most defining thing about who we are.  This is the type of podcast where they are trying to be inclusive of all religions, but the Christian leader of the podcast was clearly talking about the God that I know.

• What is that deep and constant note that defines everything in my life?  
• What is the thing that everything in my life seems to be sourced in or emanate from?
• What is the chord that others could identify that would clearly differentiate me from the other types of music?

This reminded me of the first bible study I ever attended.  So wide-eyed and opened was I and so captivating and brilliant was he (Louie Giglio), that the memory is crystal clear after more than three decades.  He was gifted at getting you to honestly commit to what you truly believed before he revealed the truth.

One teaching was based on a large puzzle with 8-10 pieces where work, school, family, friends, exercise, etc. were each identified by a single puzzle piece that completed the whole.  Once the puzzle was completed, there was one clear missing piece.  When Louie asked what was wrong with the puzzle, we all knew the answer; “God” was missing.

He wrote “God” on the remaining blank piece and added it to the puzzle.  After he asked us if the puzzle was correct now, he told us…

The puzzle was completely wrong.

For God isn’t supposed to be one of the things that define a segment of our life, he is meant to be everything.  

He isn’t supposed to be merely one of the pieces that completes the puzzle, but the cardboard the pieces are printed on.

He isn’t supposed to be one of the images in our photograph, but the paper the image is printed on.

He isn’t supposed to be one of the figures in the painting, but the canvas where all the paint is applied.

He isn’t supposed to be one of the instruments in the music, but the bassline that all the rest of the music rests upon.

If our faith is going to be the thing that defines everything else, it can’t merely be the governing philosophy of our life, it has to operate at the level of identity.  Not a part of our puzzle, but the very puzzle itself.

Consider

• Is your faith part of who you are or everything?
• What is the bass note that reverberates through your life?
• Does it clearly differentiate you from the other music?
• Can others quickly recognize it in you?

Betting

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor”. 

- Elon Musk

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Every employer I talk to is frustrated with the state of the current employment base.  Workers seem less committed to long-term employment.  Tenures of their employees seem to be shrinking.  No one is interested in building a long-term career.  Nothing is like it used to be.

Or is it?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not much has really changed on the tenure of the average employee of a salary and wage job in over 50 years. 

In fact, the last decade has been the best season for “sticking with the same job” in the last 50 years.  Maybe things aren’t that bad, but perception trumps reality every time.  The fact that it feels like it is so much worse has some wide-ranging implications.

Leaders I know talk about the significant bet they are making on each subsequent hire.  They are waking up to the reality of the incredible cost of a bad hire or the benefit of the right one.  They spend a lot of time weighing the risk or reward of each hiring decision.  

It feels almost like the risk you take when you go to Vegas for a little gambling.  You know the odds are stacked against you, but you are betting your luck might be a little better than the next person.  That you may somehow beat the odds.  It feels like you are talking all the risk in the equation…that all the betting being made is yours and a real payoff is unlikely or at least really rare.

We spend a lot of time with our leaders helping them get clearer about who they are and where they are going.  We get real specific about the team they need to get them there and exactly what is expected of every person on the current and future team.  We help them develop mature processes on how to find, filter, and on-board.

But what likely makes the most difference in their hiring success is that we awaken them to proper humility, integrity, and the nobility of their leadership. The level of care they must have as they oversee each member of their team.  The way they invite them into ownership of culture, celebrate them, and let them participate in organizational success.

Because the right balance in an employee/employer relationship is that they are lucky to have the job, but we are also lucky to have them as an employee.  If we are managing things well, there is a mutual benefit to both of us that is balanced and has both of us feeling fortunate to have the other.

At the end of the day, we are not only betting on them, they are betting on us.  

As risky and precarious as it feels to us, it feels as risky and precarious to them.  The stakes are just as high.  We are both pushing our stacks of chips to the middle of the table.

Consider

• Do you feel like you are betting on every hire?
• Do you feel the weight of the fact that they are betting on you?
• Is the cost/benefit for you and each of your employees equal?
• Do you feel like you are lucky to have them working for you and do they feel the same?

Prioritize

pri·or·i·ty

prīˈôrədē/

noun

1. the fact or condition of being regarded as more important.

pri·or·i·tize

prīˈôrəˌtīz/

verb

1. designate or treat (something) as more important than other things.

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Most of us are pretty good at the one and pretty poor at the other.  We're super clear on what our priorities should be:

1. God
2. Family
3. Friends
4. Work
5. etc.

We got the “noun” part of this thing down. We know how to give the right answer when we are asked about what is most important to us. The “verb” is where things really start to break down.

The reality is determined by what we do or prioritize in our life…what we actually do with our time.  If we restated our priorities based on how we prioritized our time and what we spent our time thinking about, it might look more like this:

1. Work
2. Money
3. Politics
4. Sports
5. etc.

Despite our understanding that “He has overcome the world”, “nothing escapes His hand”, and that He is who we are supposed to prioritize first and source all our answers from, He is often the last place we turn.

We “cowboy up”, “take the bull by the horns”, or simply redouble our efforts and intentionality to power our way through our problems.  We cast our burdens on the Lord…only after we have exhausted every effort on our own part.  

We say our priorities are one thing while what we prioritize says something completely different.  The proverbs say, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”  

The answer to righting things and reprioritizing our lives is to break the rhythm. To stop and take stock. To honestly reflect, reaffirm your priorities, and prioritize the right things.

We do that periodically at events like our Hotel Emma Leadership Event or Lifeplan Retreat.

We do that monthly for a day at Executive Board meetings with leaders and in the monthly one-on-one coaching that comes along with that membership.

We coach a weekly rhythm change through the powerful concept of an “Ideal” to help you prioritize the best life possible aligning with your priorities.

We do that through encouraging daily tools like our “No Regrets Tool” that helps leaders focus and center themselves to begin their day.  (Let me know if you would like us to forward that to you.)

To say that we have certain priorities that don’t line up with how we prioritize our time and minds lacks integrity. When I tell my employees, children, or anyone else that is watching me more than they are listening to me, they had better see that what I am saying is aligned with how I am living.

Is it any wonder why so many that we are supposed to be leading don’t seem to follow our lead? 

Maybe it is a less a question about our priorities and more a question of how we are prioritizing our lives.  Not about whether or not we are saying the right things, but if we are actually doing them.

Consider

• Do you know what your priorities are?
• Does the way you are prioritizing your life line up with that?
• What do you think it is costing you to not have those things aligned?
• What is the next right thing you need to do about it?

Staged

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” 

- Jesus

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Our realtor came with a stager.  She rolled through the house and quickly arrived at a short list of things that would ultimately change our lives.

• cut the contents of our closets down by half
• whittle our hundreds of books in our shelves to dozens
• make the house more welcoming from the street
• push some fresh paint on the walls in a few rooms
• get rid of a bunch of things crowding our garage
• make sure the house is really, really clean
• remove some of the furniture from our overstuffed rooms
• repair a few things I had been putting off
• depersonalize the home by removing most of the photos from the museum we had created in honor of our beautiful children

That last one was a little hard to take at first. Weren’t our children the best selling point of our family and our house?  Of course, it wasn’t meant to diminish our family, but make room for the acquiring family to more fully envision their family in the home instead of ours.

Then came the real challenge. 

We had to keep the home looking staged so that with very little notice, the realtor could show up to walk someone through our home. Luckily, three different potential purchasers competed with one another and the home was sold on the first day, well over list price.

Despite the fact that we didn’t have to live a "staged" life for more than one day related to the sale of our home, we’re still living a staged life over 5 years later. 

• We didn’t rent storage for all the things we needed to lean out of our house, we got rid of them.
• We sold a bunch of stuff.
• We donated many things (including game tables to a summer camp and gave almost every book and DVD we owned to a library).
• We got all of our closets, cabinets, and our garage down to bare essentials.

Now, we regularly clean out closets, cabinets, the pantry, and the garage. We try to keep our home ready to receive guests at all times.  A guest room with private bath is always set up and ready. The house is kept fairly lean without too much crowding from furniture or too much noise from the clutter on counters or walls.

We work to keep it tidy enough where we would be comfortable inviting anyone to our home on a moments notice.  And we keep the house and especially the kitchen very clean since it opens up into our living area.  We try to make anyone who comes over feel welcome.  

Being ready to receive almost anyone at any time and making them feel welcomed in a comfortable, lean, and peaceful environment has changed the way we live.  

How different would your home, your family relationships, even your business look, if you knew that at any moment someone might show up for a visit and take a good look around?  How different would it feel to your employees or your family if you cleaned up, leaned out, and simplified some things?  How different would it look to live more of a staged life at work or at home?

Consider

• Does your life feel cluttered, messy, and crowded?
• Does your business feel that way as well?
• How much more peaceful would a more "staged" life and work feel?

Boxes

Pandora's box -

noun

1. a source of extensive but unforeseen troubles or problems

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Zeus gives a box to Pandora, the first woman, with one strong stipulation: don’t open it. Like almost anyone, the prohibition on opening the box was actually the catalyst to that occurring.  (At least that is the way it works for me.)  She opens the box and all kinds of evils and miseries were unleashed to affect mankind.

Most of us suffer under the idea that there is stuff in a box or closet that we just need to keep closed. That if we open up to those mysteries, all kinds of misery and evil will be unleashed.  

But my experience has been exactly the opposite.

What is actually lurking in the shadows is opportunity, goodness, and the foundation for so much restoration. It is walking into those closets and looking unflinchingly into those boxes where all kinds of great things begin.

The problem is that most of us have spent our entire life trying to keep that stuff in there.  

Keeping everything under wraps.  

Aggressively looking the other direction.  

Busying ourselves with all manner of things.

Pretending the boxes don’t even exist.

Most of us are doing a pretty good job at all that.  The first step to unlocking the mysteries that strongly dictate our behavior is to actually acknowledge or discover that they are even there...shoved away in that box. The next step is to have the courage to open that rascal up.

The reality is that all of us live in a fallen world and each of us is operating as a reaction to the vagaries of the particular portion of that world we’ve encountered.

• The indecisive leader fearing his father’s disapproval.
• The hiding leader shrouded in the shame of their past failure.
• The fearful leader quietly operating in the reaction to some childhood trauma.
• The guarded leader still controlled by past embarrassment.

When you meet someone, you are meeting the mixed basket of every experience they’ve lived and either an integrated, healed, wholehearted version of them or a disintegrated, unhealed, shadow of who they could be.  The delta between those two different archetypes can only be bridged by looking at what is lurking in all those boxes.

A leader I know just opened up a box he didn’t know existed. It was a category of shame that he had been operating under for which he had no awareness.  On the other side of that journey backward has been restoration, healing, restoration of relationships, and all kinds of other life-giving things. 

Like most people who have walked this journey, he wouldn’t even consider going back to a life with that box still closed.  He is just beginning to discover how the thing locked away in that box has operated and impacted his life.  (One of the great privileges of walking with so many leaders is helping them to be aware of and open these boxes that become treasure chests.)

It is going to be a glorious experience to watch this leader view more of his life with a less veiled face. Opening that box may not have been easy, but the treasure found there is going to just keep on giving.

Like most of us who have walked that road, the next box will be much easier to open. He might even go on a treasure hunt to seek it out!

Consider

• What kind of awareness do you have of how you operate and why?
• Do you think there are things from your life that determine the way you behave? Experiences that affect the way you predominately view the things going on around you?
• Are you up to going on a journey to discover what is keeping you from being wholehearted and free?  LIFEPLAN is a safe and structured place to go on that journey.

(In)validate

“We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”   

- Steven Pressfield

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We believe in the idea of calling. We think that we were all uniquely created to offer one aspect of the Divine that no other creature can (as C.S. Lewis talks about).  Abundant life, momentum, productivity, joy, etc. are found at the intersection of your life, God, and what he particularly created you to do.

One of the leaders we work with said recently in an interview:

“Having that kind of clarity gives you a sense of calm, a resolve. You are not anxious about the future or even the past for that moment. You are a little more excited about the present and that everything is so purposeful and is so meaningful.”  

Turns out there is similar data to support the power of organizational purpose and helping employees align their own purposes to that of the organization.  A recent Harvard study reports that employees who derive meaning or purpose from their work report twice the job satisfaction and are three times less likely to leave than those that don’t.

But probably the most powerful thing is that there is a deep validation that comes from a person knowing their purpose or identity.  There is an inner resolve, a confidence, a certainty, that transcends the situation and makes a person fairly impenetrable to the things that often weigh others down.

If you are looking to your job (title, compensation, other rewards) to validate you as a person, you are likely going to be invalidated by that job as well.

Anything you give the ability to validate you also has the ability to invalidate.

The reason that some people or employees act as if their very life (or identity) rest on the things that happen in their jobs…is because it does.  Without an identity or confidence about who they are, a lot is riding on their compensation, recognition, and even validation through their work.

They are taking their primary validation question to their work and that is why the inevitable invalidation it brings produces so much employee dissatisfaction. They are essentially asking their jobs and employers to do the impossible. To do something their work was never designed to do.

The reason we are such a big fan of our Lifeplan retreat is that it helps people find an authentic and unique identity that transcends their vocation and everything else. With the validation of the deeper and truer identity sourced from God, you develop a sort of Teflon coating that keeps you from the effects of almost every form of invalidation.

Is it any wonder that so many of our clients sponsor their employees to come to Lifeplan?

Consider

• Do you take your primary identity from your work?
• Are your employees doing the same?
• How frequently does your work disappoint and invalidate you?
• Do you think that is the source of a lot of your employee's frustrations as well?

Clear

“The right time to make the right decision…is as soon as possible.” 

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When I was involved in the securities industry for a couple of decades, bond salesmen used to talk about firing clients. It was always a cause for celebration when you could.  

• It meant you no longer had to deal with a tedious or challenging client.
• It clearly meant that you also had enough other business that you could afford to lose the client you were firing.

It was not something you could do while you were building your career. When you were trying to establish your book of business, you pretty much had to accept doing business with whoever would help you pay the bills. It didn’t matter how difficult or challenging the client might be.

Every time we added a new salesperson to the trading floor I managed, the same process would occur. We would help the new hire establish a book by giving them the castaways from our existing sales team. These were the prospects that they hadn’t much luck with, but also the difficult or challenging clients that the team wanted to fire.

We are starting to see some of our clients fire customers as well.

I met with one recently who proudly told me that they had fired a client. It was a very big deal.  Before you think that this doesn’t sound like a very significant thing, you probably need to know that they only have 7 others.  

They were firing 1/8 of their customer base!

So far this year, this client has clarified their values and purpose. They have crafted a transcendent vision and started working on the strategic steps it will take to get them there.  They have elevated leaders and begun to approach their market in a much more strategic way.

They are clear on who they are.

They are clear on where they are going.

They are clear on the kind of clients they are going after.

They are clear on the kind of clients that no longer fit their firm.

They are adding a client to replace the one they are firing. The first of many they will add out of their new confidence, clarity, and desire to grow in their market.

In the investment world, you fired a customer when you could afford to.  Our client fired someone because they couldn’t afford not to. Their client didn’t align with their values, purpose, or fit the overall culture of their business. The revenue wasn’t worth the challenges, frustrations, or the way they treated their employees.

They are making the right decision for the right reasons. 

Consider

• Are you clear on who the best clients are for you?
• Are you clear on your values, purpose, future vision, and your overall culture?
• Are you using these crucial benchmarks to guide your decision making?
• Are you willing to make even difficult financial decisions based on them?

Restoration

"This hotel is named in honor of Emma Koehler, a towering figure in Pearl history. Emma ran the brewery after her husband and Pearl president Otto Koehler died in 1914. She was an ingenious CEO who kept the brewery going during Prohibition by converting operations to dry cleaning and auto repair, and making near beer, ice cream and soda. While other breweries were shutting down, Emma kept her entire workforce employed."

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Stories about restoration may be my favorite thing. Honoring great leadership is one of the others. Emma Koehler’s story and the construction of Hotel Emma are about both.  

We all, at times, feel like we are powerless to succeed given the deck of cards that the market has dealt us or our industry.

You know that feeling, right?

And while there is a humility in not taking full credit for our success, it can be a tremendous stumbling block to not accept some the responsibility for those good things happening. If you don’t have anything to do with the success of your company or family experience, it would also mean that you don’t bear any of the responsibility for the struggle and failure.

The reality is that we play a crucial role in our success and our trials. We are not successful circumstantially and we are not hapless, powerless victims when it doesn’t go well. 

Believing that we can do something about our difficult circumstances is one of the key building blocks in restoration.

Think about it, Emma ran a brewery during prohibition! We all face competition and shifts in the market conditions, but the thing she produced became completely illegal to manufacture and sell! I’ve fallen over backward against puffs of wind that didn’t come anywhere close to that kind of headwind. She is an extraordinary picture of leadership in the worst of times.

And when they started the restoration of the Pearl Brewery, what better name could they have chosen than “Emma” for their hotel?  And what a way to honor her. The hotel has won numerous design and travel awards, and Conde Nast called it an "architectural wonder" when it named it one of the top hotels in the world in 2016. It is truly extraordinary.

We are really big on stories like Emma’s and are increasingly running with a tribe of local business leaders writing similar ones. Our desire is to see more restoration…

At SummitTrek, we exist to restore leaders and organizations to their original intended purpose through coaching.

For us, restoration means a couple of things. It is about restoring the original intentions the owner had when they started their business. No one started their business to live in chaos, overwhelm, and operate with a lack of clarity. But we also believe that God intends our enterprises to make a difference in the world…to be His very hands and feet in terms of meeting the needs of team members and our communities.

While we are privileged and honored to help coach dozens of leaders (and their teams) toward that kind of restoration, we desire to see more of these kinds of stories. One of the ways we’ve done that is through a several hundred of these posts we’ve connected to a several hundred of you. Another is to gather leaders for a few hours to introduce them to a roadmap and help them take some actual steps toward the restoration other leaders are finding.

And what better location could there be than the Hotel Emma?

Consider

• Have you quit believing that you could have the business you hoped for?

• Have you made an agreement with the fact that the problems you are facing are not solvable?

• Would you be willing to invest four hours to make a real difference in your circumstances?

Attendance

“Soul Care. The definition of soul care is vast and varied. Soul care, according to the strictest sense of the words, involves literally caring for and curing the very breath that gives us life. It is tending to the deepest needs of the soul.” 

- American Association of Christian Counselors

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My tank was pretty much on empty.  I was showing up to work every day and was pretty proud of how I showed up to every game, practice, or other children’s event for my first 3 children who were 13, 10, and 7 at the time.  I was super present in my children’s lives, but knew in my heart that I didn’t really have much to offer.

At a men’s weekend in Colorado a little over 15 years ago, we were forced to take a hard look at our lives, our parenting, and our marriage.  It wasn’t a “beat down” like I had experienced at so many faith-based men’s events, but an open and inspiring invitation to reach for more.

I wanted more of that, but even as I heard what was being offered, I countered with my perfect attendance record in my own defense. I was flooded with the sobering reality that ALL I had to offer was my attendance. I wasn’t bringing any life, joy, abundance, adventure, or even the hope of a better or transformed life.

I was merely showing up because that is all I could do.

I not only was never gone, I was never away in the ways I need to be to recharge, replenish, fill my tanks, and do the things I need to do to be a source of life for my family.  I was just surviving.

And despite all the rhetoric from me and others about an abundant life, restoration, freedom, and all those other inspiring deliverables the gospel offered, the reality of my life wasn’t much of a billboard to sell anything to anyone. I wasn’t even buying it. The reality that my kids wouldn’t either and would make different choices one day, was terrifying to me.

I began to model what I had been taught at that event.  They offered a priority of relationships and time spent that has become even more refined and clear.  It is increasingly poignant and necessary in the increasingly chaotic times we live.  

In order to live a healthy, abundant, and fulfilling life, they offered this hierarchy:

• GOD
• SOUL CARE
• MARRIAGE
• KIDS
• A FEW (friends)
• EVERYTHING ELSE

The first is pretty obvious, but it gets pretty challenging from there. Soul Care? It felt touchy-feely, selfish, and in conflict with my desire to honor my wife and my kids. But honoring this priority of relationships and time has changed everything in my life. Spending time on soul care was the missing ingredient that changed everything else.

When I started honoring what God created in me, the deepest things, everything else started to find its’ proper order. While my attendance record was no longer as perfect, I no longer just attended when I was there, I showed up. I brought abundant life, joy, adventure, and proof of the restoration that was offered. As I was claiming more, they were all finding the same.

Prioritizing my marriage first before my children got easier. Our children actually felt more loved as our marriage relationship strengthened.

I came to understand that dozens of “friends” in the way I had known them paled in comparison to a few deep and lasting ones over time.

And when I showed up to work or engaged in the avocational things I felt called to, I showed up more powerfully there as well.  Prioritizing God and Soul Care above all else actually made me more effective in every way.

Permissioning other leaders to prioritize Soul Care has been one of the more disruptive and transformative things we do with leaders.

Consider

• Are you operating with a full tank?
• Are you bringing abundant life, joy, energy, adventure, or purpose to those you love and lead?
• How much time are you spending on soul care?
• Are you doing the things you need to do to take care of yourself so that you are really able to take care of others?

1 = 3

“I’m the CFO and my job is to find the best people and pay them as little as I can possibly can.”

At least he was honest.

Despite managing $1 Billion in bank assets and outperforming virtually everyone in my high-performing peer group, I was still making only a few thousand more than when I started as a credit analyst just out of college.  Add to the fact we were expecting our third child and I felt like it was time to go around the boss (who said he was unable to adjust my compensation) and speak directly to the CFO we all reported to.

I was incredibly nervous.  My presentation included 3 years performance against the relevant Lehman indices, the incremental impact of my investment strategies, and a little about the changing responsibilities I was facing at home.  I had salary surveys that were readily available for my position and I was making a small fraction versus others who managed the amount of money I had under my responsibility.

When I finished, he said that he almost stopped me before I started, because they had already approved a 50% wage increase for me.  He said that I had earned it and it was very well deserved. Unfortunately, it felt incredibly insincere. I asked if we could speak “off the record” and I wondered aloud why it seemed like management always waited until people were at the end of their ropes, frustrated and discouraged, before they stepped up and did the right thing.  And then he said it:

“…find the best people and pay them as little as I possibly can.”

I told him I thought that concept was wrong and he told me that one day I would understand. Well, now I do.  After reading an excellent blog post about the Container Store, I really do understand that he was completely wrong.  What we should be doing is finding the best possible, highly productive people and paying them as much as we possibly can.

In the video above, CEO of the Container Store says that they pay 50% over the average for retail workers, but get three times the productivity from them. They also experience single-digit turnover in an industry where the average is triple digits. He says:

“You’re getting three times the productivity at only 50 to 100 percent higher labor costs. So the employee wins because she’s getting paid 50 percent more than somebody else would likely pay her, the company wins because It’s getting three times the productivity at that only 50 percent higher cost, and the customer wins because they’re getting this engaged, really great employee.”

In addition to well compensated, they are also:

• Well trained
• Well qualified
• Highly motivated
• Highly engaged
• Very satisfied

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Fortune Magazine has listed the Container Store as one of the 100 best companies to work for....15 years in a row!  Maybe not hiring more for less, but less for more is the answer to many of our frustrations.

Consider

• Do you employ above above average people?
• Do you pay them an above average wage?
• How do you know?
• What changes do you need to make in how you recruit, hire, compensate, and develop your team members?

Campfire

"Breakdown? Breakthrough. I couldn’t escape one simple thought: I hated myself. No, no, no, here’s what it was: I hated my place in the world. I had so much to say and no one to listen. And then it happened. It was the oddest, most unexpected thing. I began writing what they call a mission statement. Not a memo, a mission statement. You know, a suggestion for the future of our company. A night like this doesn’t come along very often. I seized it. What started out as one page became twenty-five. Suddenly, I was my father’s son again… Hey – I’ll be the first to admit, what I was writing was somewhat touchy feely. I didn’t care. I have lost the ability to bull#$%*. I was the me I’d always wanted to be."

— Jerry Mcguire

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Some of my favorite conversations have happened while sitting around a campfire. I realized that there have been prolonged seasons of my life where my normal conversation seemed to profoundly shift when I sat around a fire with other men.  I talked about things there that just didn’t seem to come up in my everyday conversations.  I don’t know if it was that I was more primed, the other men there were more open, or somehow the Father orchestrated conversational magic as we looked into the flames.

It was likely all of those things, but I’ve come to realize that the real catalyst for significant conversations lies far beyond the campfire.  Progressively, I am having campfire conversations in every conversation.  Whether I am sitting around a fire, in a coffee shop, at a conference room table, in the stands at a kid’s sporting event, or in line at the DMV, I seem to have the same conversations about the same things.  I think I have lost the ability to bull#$%*.

I am not arrogant enough to believe that I am not “full of it” sometimes, but I don’t have any energy to pretend anymore.  I think I might actually be becoming the man I’ve always wanted to be.

• I’ll still tune in when the Spurs are making headlines
• I am a little more concerned about the weather because I like to keep the top down on my Jeep
• I think things inside the beltway are really messed up in D.C.

I don’t, however, have much energy to spend considerable time talking about weather, politics, or sports.  I can’t go through the motions anymore. I will not talk about those things if they keep me from the things that really matter.

I had never connected these two statements in Jerry’s famous opening speech before:

“Suddenly, I was my father’s son again.”

“I have lost the ability to bull#$%*"

Sonship is the necessary understanding to free you up from the other.  Knowing my identity and hanging out with other men who are not posing (pretending), but are honestly living into their own unique identity, has changed everything. Sitting around a campfire helps, but sonship, authenticity, the real gospel, and going after God’s best are the necessary kindling. Pretending, legalism, the religious spirit, and posing snuff out the campfire in seconds.

I have started envisioning a campfire:

• Between me and the people I meet with one on one
• In important meetings in my business domain
• In the center of the table during Executive Board meetings
• Between the couches and chairs in my living room
• On the table between my wife and I on date night

Having a campfire conversation is driven more by a posture of the heart than actual flames.

I refuse to do life on my own and I am not interested in having anything other than campfire conversations. I am pursuing others that desire authentic discourse about things that really matter and are interested in real change. If that’s you, let’s grab some coffee, lunch, or a few sticks of wood.

Consider

• Have you broken down?  Broken through?  Do you need to?
• Do you live with a spirit of sonship or by more of an orphan spirit?  Do you feel like you are doing life on your own?
• When is the last time you sat around a campfire (or in a coffee shop, car, or meeting) and had a conversation that really mattered?

Interdependence

in·de·pend·ence [in-di-pen-duhns] -
1. Also, independency. the state or quality of being independent.
2. freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.

in·ter·de·pend·ence [in-ter-di-pen-duhns] -
the quality or condition of being interdependent, or mutually reliant on each other

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As we celebrate our independence from a king and a kingdom, I am increasingly aware of our crucial need for greater interdependence with a King and a Kingdom. The incredible courage and self-determination it took to escape the control and tyranny of an oppressive monarchy might have lingering costs greater than we could have imagined.

The prototypical small American business owner is an extension and celebration of that pioneering spirit that made our country great. Small business owners stand on the shoulders of their entrepreneurial fathers; Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, and more recently, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Stepping outside more certain and defined paths, they went their own way and changed the course of history.

While we love that about them, there can be an ugly undercurrent to that path. Many of the small business owners we encounter are overwhelmed, frustrated, and completely alone. The same pioneering spirit that afforded them the courage and independence to chart their own course is often the source of their isolation and eventual failure.

The reality is that we were created for relationship.

The entire story of mankind is essentially one where God is separated from his children who are desperately trying to be reconciled. He clarified His intentions, wiped the earth to start over, and ultimately took the form of man and paid the ultimate sacrifice. All so that we might be known as the children of God and walk in a deep, interdependent relationship with Him.

A very wise man of the faith I know recently described the New Testament as less a rule book of tips and techniques and more of a relational handbook of what it looked like to walk in intimacy with the Father. More of a celebration of deep and intimate fellowship between the Creator and the crown of His creation.

Today, we are more crucially aware than ever of how we can’t go at it alone and how desperately we need others. In a season of our greatest success, the stakes seem to be increasing and our pathway ever more perilous. The enemy prowls and seems to threaten our every next step. We are trying to practice greater intimacy with the Father:

• We are roped up with other faith-based business leaders
• We are operating with clear and transcendent vision for the organizations we lead
• We have better clarity on the unique calling and purpose for our lives
• We are drawing upon wise counsel at every turn

We are seeking greater independence from the way of the world and greater interdependence with a King and His Kingdom. It is glorious and terrifying. The way forward is both incredibly clear and wildly uncertain. It makes no sense outside of deep fellowship and heart knowledge of God. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Consider

• Are you frustrated, tired, and alone?
• Are you living in a universe that revolves around you where nothing seems to happen outside of your power, will, and control?
• How willing are you to give up the independence that stands in the way of the great interdependence our faith requires?

Underestimate

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

- Bill Gates

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I think we started thinking about grandkids almost as soon as we started having kids. We hoped that our six children would produce a quiver full.  

“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior

    are children born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man

    whose quiver is full of them.”

Not only did our children start to marry young, our two eldest have now blessed us with grandchildren as well. We heard all the rhetoric about grandchildren:

"You won’t believe how much you can love those kids."

"It is even better than parenting your own."

"All the best stuff without some of the challenges."

Even with 25 years of anticipation and all that rhetoric…

We never saw it coming.

We completely underestimated how much we would love and enjoy our grandkids. It caught us a little by surprise. Maybe not my wife who is sort of the Mr. Rogers or Mother Theresa of moms, but it certainly did me.

In this case, underestimating wasn’t costly, but a beautiful and wonderful surprise.  Alternately, we deal with serious problems related to the over- and under-estimating of our clients.

• So much frustration about what they can’t seem to get accomplished right now.
• So little ability to dream beyond their current circumstances and carry any kind of hope for the future.

We had a company hire us to help them work on a strategic plan. We told them that our process was to… 

1. Define culture (values, purpose)
2. Craft an inspired picture of the future (vision)
3. Build a clear path to that future (strategic plan)

If you define your culture very clearly...

Celebrate, instruct, and live by it more intentionally...

Your future should really different than your today.

A vision is a clearly and fully articulated picture of that future. Many people define vision as a more inspired and ethereal expression of purpose. Ours is tangible, specific, and measurable. With a fully articulated vision, creating a strategic plan with goals and action steps comes very easily.

Helping people and companies translate an inspired and powerful picture of the future builds anticipation, creates momentum, and restores hope. It also creates a serious problem. They want to realize that future now…much sooner than is possible or reasonable.

They underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years.

They overestimate what they can accomplish in 1.

Our job is first to convince them that more and better is still possible. Essentially, to restore their hope. And then manage their expectations and help them craft an orderly and reasonable path toward that future.  

And along the way, we get to enjoy a hundred small victories as they take each step toward a destination they had quit believing was still possible.

Consider

• Have you quit believing that things can change and get better? (In your life, your marriage, your work, etc)
• Are you constantly frustrated by your attempts to get things done with seemingly no progress?
• Is everything your working on tethered to an inspired vision?
• Are you really open to learning how to over and underestimate appropriately?

Kingdom

“The Kingdom of heaven is like…"

- Jesus of Nazareth

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Apparently, the monarchy is alive and well. Most estimates target global viewership of Prince William’s recent nuptials at about 2 billion.

2 billion! Over 25% of the world’s population!

Okay, at least 2 of my daughters and my wife (tape delay) watched the royal event. We definitely factored into those numbers, but it is still pretty staggering. There is an incredible amount of focus on the royal family and the events of their lives.

This sort of kingdom, however, stands in clear contrast to the one most of the people I run with talk about.

A recent podcast I heard differentiated the two this way:

• Man is at the center of the world.
• God is at the center of the Kingdom.

It couldn’t be said much more clearly than that. I’ve also heard it said that the difference between the Kingdom and the world is that one seeks to make much of God and the other seeks to make much of man. That is why the royal wedding is such a conundrum. It is about a kingdom, but the small “k” variety.  But it seems like the world is way more interested in that one than the one I am interested in learning more about.

The Kingdom of heaven is like...

• …a treasure hidden in a field
• …a householder who brings out his treasures
• …a landowner hiring laborers
• …a man who sought to settle accounts with laborers
• …a man who sowed good seed in his field
• …a man going on a journey entrusting his possessions
• …a king giving a wedding feast for his son
• …a dragnet cast into the sea
• …leaven in bread
• …a mustard seed

Every depiction is of abundance and typically for the good of others. There is enough (more than expected really) and all are cared for in the process.

This depiction often flies in the face of what is experienced and even talked about in religious circles. There is competition, scarcity, and the sense that there never seems to be enough. They seem to be suffering under a poverty mentality even as they are seeking to address the literal and spiritual poverty of those they serve. There is a lot of fear, concern, and a sense that the battle is being lost.

One of the greatest deliverables of our coaching from a Kingdom mindset is that hope is restored. When we paint the picture of nobility, possibility, and the probability of things changing in this sort of direction, we literally see hope rise.  

Fresh air seems to fill lungs and leaders seem to sit taller at the mere inference. This perspective is loaded with hope, promise, and the expectation of better things to come. It also comes with a good bit of assault.  

As hope and expectation start to rise in you...

As you start to focus on the Kingdom and the abundance it offers...

There will be plenty of others trying to convince you that it doesn’t.

And you will be assaulted by a world that reminds you of the same.

But Matthew encouraged us to go with Jesus' message:  “As you go, proclaim this message: 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.’"

Consider

• When you think of the Kingdom, what is it like?
• Is that the prevailing worldview of your day-to-day?
• Do you feel like an alien in this world as you better understand your citizenry is in a Kingdom?
• How would focusing on the Kingdom and the abundance Jesus purports to change the way you live?

Tensions

“Is this a problem to solve or a tension to manage?” 

- Andy Stanley

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One of the concepts I reference most frequently in client meetings has to do with tensions versus problems. It was introduced to me by Andy Stanley at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit in 2010. One or more of our coaches likely reference it weekly in a client conversation.  It has become part of the holy canon of principles we apply.

For some, the idea of healthy tension may be an oxymoron. They believe that if they have a healthy organization, there won’t be any tension. Many leaders actually believe that their ultimate job is to get rid of all the tension.  

This can lead to passive-aggressive attempts to make everyone happy, versus pursuing what is truly in everyone’s best interest, which will likely not make everyone unilaterally happy. 

With any piece of machinery there is a natural level of wear and tear from inevitable friction. The friction is what makes the machinery effective. The same is true with our opposable thumbs. Our thumb works against our fingers to create the tension needed to successfully grab hold of an object, be it a contact lens or a bowling ball.

Tension can be a good, even necessary thing. In these situations, the goal is not to eliminate, but merely minimize.

Conflicts need to be resolved.

Healthy tensions need to be managed.

Organizationally, trying to remove all of the tension is the equivalent of cutting off your thumb. It may remove all the pressure and tension applied to things, but it also dramatically eliminates your productivity and possibly your opportunity for profitability.

A certain amount of tension is actually necessary to achieve a successful organization. There is a natural tension between excellence and resources. For example:

• A replacement contractor can achieve such a high level of craftsmanship in their work that they can’t profitably and efficiently finish their work.

• A sales team can set a higher level of expectations that procure the sale, but make meeting those expectations nearly impossible for the production team.

• Being adequately staffed to immediately handle customer flow in the busy season will likely mean you have idle staff in slow seasons.

Organizations that embrace this concept learn to quit wasting energy on trying to solve problems that can’t (and maybe shouldn’t) be solved. A new category is provided that allows a team to appropriate and diffuse unnecessary stress.

You might be asking yourself about the times you've experienced the destructive outcome of unhealthy conflict and tension.  Stanley believes that this is a by-product of:

• Unhealthy people

• Poor leadership

As leaders, our job is to make sure all the information is on the table, that everyone is heard, and then help manage the tension toward resolution. Identifying a situation as a tension that you are choosing to manage tends to remove the emotional need for there to be a winner or a loser.  Essentially both sides of any issue will have to give some ground to take some ground.

For the better good, I will need to give some ground to the other side.

With more significant positions and stronger personalities, we risk a Darwin-esque corporate survival of the fittest, instead of mining all the collective wisdom and opinion for the overall greater good. We typically know the sides of issues that particular people represent.

They need to be heard and you want to hear from them, but the acknowledgment of managing tension provides a framework and category to hold both sides in a healthy way that moves toward a better collective solution.

Consider

• Are you dealing with the same “problems” year after year, season after season?

• Did you ever think that they may be necessary tensions that need to be managed instead of problems to solve?

• What situations or people came to mind as you read about this concept?

• If you are interested in learning more, reach out for a conversation. We have filters to determine which is which and can help identify which employees are tensions or problems.

Stories

"God is magnificent; he can never be praised enough. There are no boundaries to his greatness. Generation after generation stands in awe of your work; each one tells stories of your mighty acts."

- A Psalm Of David

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Americans spent over $10B at movie theaters last year. We are pretty aware of the fact that there is a diversion offered there that cannot be replicated anywhere else. With 2 hours and about 10 dollars, we can escape the mundane and get lost in adventure, intrigue, and romance. We can forget that the story we are living is likely much smaller and less interesting than the ones we are experiencing on the screen.

We’ve talked extensively in this blog about how all stories are evocative of the one great larger story of the gospel. Just having that awareness dramatically changes the way you approach almost every story. But at a StoryBrand conference in Nashville, I learned there was far more going on than I realized.

Turns out that our brains are wired to seek simplicity out of all the complexity around us. We are constantly sifting through the information, sights, sounds, and confusion around us, trying to process everything in order to make sense of things. Our brains don’t like to work too hard to figure things out. When there isn’t clarity or we can’t distill what we are experiencing down to manageable ideas or understandings, we move on.

Current website marketing theory even tells us that if a viewer of a website can’t tell you…

1. What they are offering.
2. How it can address your needs.
3. What they want you to do next.

…after 5 seconds of viewing the home page of your website, you’ll lose most of us. We are trying to process so much information being thrown at us that we often don’t purchase the best product/service, but the one that our brains can most quickly and easily understand.

The speaker at the conference that I attended said that music is simply “noise submitted to rules” and that captivating stories are simply “information submitted to rules.” What we find at the movies is the distillation of 2,000 years of learning about how to tell great stories. In two hours,

• We meet a character
• Who has a problem
• Who needs a guide
• With a plan
• Who experiences a call to action (an inciting event)
• That results in success
• Or results in failure

Let’s apply this to our story:

We are separated from our Father and the glory of eternity by the human condition of sin. The Father sent a guide with a simple plan that will result in amazing success if we accept, or treacherous failure if we don’t. It is really that simple. We have made the simple, powerful, and clarifying story of the gospel far too complicated. The author of confusion may be accomplishing his greatest misdirection in calling us to complication.

It is interesting that when the Pharisees tried to overcomplicate and trick Jesus with the law, He simplified it down to two things:

LOVE GOD, LOVE OTHERS.

In the ministry of Young Life, they are well aware of how much we have complicated things.  At camp, they tell the gospel in a simple clear progression over several nights:

• Creation
• Separation
• Sin
• Savior
• Decision
• Restoration

My favorite camp story is of a young man from the high school where we volunteered. He had attended church his whole life, but as the nights and the story progressed at camp, his increasingly emphatic response was…

"HOW COME NO ONE EVER TOLD ME THIS!?"

He had likely heard the gospel hundreds of times, but hadn’t ever processed it in a way that made sense and was easily understood.

He didn’t know what they were offering.

He didn’t understand how it addressed his needs.

He wasn’t clear about what he was supposed to do next.

So, he moved on to something else.

No wonder so many on the planet are choosing a path other than the one that offers real life. The home pages of our lives are telling so many stories other than the One Great Story, that most people close it and move on to something more easily understood. The Psalms make it clear that one of our responsibilities is to tell stories of His greatness.

Turns out there is a lot riding on our ability to tell simple, powerful, and clear stories.

Consider

• Is what you are offering with your business clear and easily understood by others?
• Are the vision and strategic plan you are leading your company with clear and easily understood by your team members?
• What story is your life telling? Is it easy for others to understand? 

MasterClass

“I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will give you counsel and watch over you.” 

- King David

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I had a simple principle that guided every day of my investment career:

I was just smart enough to know that there were a lot of people smarter than I am.

Now the brokers that called me from all over the country were used to talking to investment managers that thought they had it all figured out. The questions they usually posited were intended to stroke my ego and feed the misconception that I didn’t need their suggestions and that all my ideas must be the right and only ones.

But I had a great series of mentors that taught me about humility. They reminded me that all that ego stroking and affirmation was really about the large pile of money I was managing and it wasn’t about me. They taught me that all the “friends” I made on the other side of the street would largely disappear once the money was no longer between us.  (Apart from a very few exceptions, none of those relationships extended beyond my investment career.)

That idea that there are others smarter and more experienced than I am continues to guide my life. We curate the best ideas and the brightest minds in the business and coaching arenas. 

When a client is struggling in a particular area, we go to work on solutions, but some of our first questions are always;

• Who is the best in your industry?  
• What are they doing in the area where you are struggling?  
• Who has already figured this out or solved this problem?
• What can we learn from the best?

That extends even into my personal life. In most areas, I am looking for better, to upgrade, to improve. I encourage this in my children as well. Recently, I was looking for ways to supplement their homeschooling and I stumbled across something called MasterClass. You can sign up for a single video-driven “class” or get an annual subscription that allows you access to all the classes. You can learn…

• writing from Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, or Judy Blume
• photography from Annie Leibowitz
• cooking from Thomas Keller, Gordon Ramsey, or Wolfgang Puck
• film making from Martin Scorsese or Ron Howard
• architecture from Frank Gehry
• chess from Gary Kasparov
• tennis from Serena Williams or basketball from Seth Curry

There are 35 current MasterClasses with many more being produced. This trailer for Hans Zimmer’s Masterclass on film scoring that gives you a taste and a feel for the classes.  His class alone includes 31 individual lessons!

Is there something your company is doing well that you want to do better? Is there something that your company is really struggling with? What are the best in your industry doing? Who is finding the greatest success that you can learn from? There is gold in hunting down these answers.

One of our clients was facing some challenging issues and told me that there was a “Top Shelf” community online that was created for the sharing of best practice ideas in his industry. You had to apply to join this closed network, were not allowed any negative chatter, and had to contribute to the community with your own ideas or best practices to stay a member. How great is that?

Apparently, many of us have bought into the idea because there are entire religions built on following the best practices of one person.

Consider

• Are you just smart enough to know that there are people smarter than you?
• Are you continuing to learn and grow as a leader, despite the fact that you have found some measure of success?
• Who is the best at what you do?
• Are you reading them, following them, and continuing to learn from them? Why not?

Overflow

“For if you give, you will get! Your gift will return to you in full and overflowing measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use to give—large or small—will be used to measure what is given back to you.” 

- Jesus of Nazareth

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My friend Bill told me about a vision God gave him for me. He said that there was a free-flowing river of God’s provision, freedom, life, and abundance. I was standing right out in the middle and the water was washing over me.

He also said that the other picture he had was of him standing on the riverbank barely dipping his toe into the water.  

I think about those two images often.  

The contrast.

The embedded hope and longing.

The deep and powerful truth they hold.

Increasingly, the leaders I meet are exhausted, overwhelmed, and often discouraged.  They are not operating out of an overflow, but out of a scarcity of resources. More specifically, the resources of time and energy.

All their faith inputs. All those books, podcasts, anecdotes, and testimonies of other’s success almost seem to taunt us instead of encourage us. They read of an abundant life and a few others that seem to be finding it, both personally and professionally, and they don’t really know what to do with all that.

It is as if most of them are standing on the banks of a raging river of freedom, margin, success, and abundance….

…and they are barely dipping their toe in the flowing water.

The unstated assumption in the encouragement of Jesus to give freely is that there is an abundance of resources available. There is more. More than enough. For you, for those you care for and for everybody else. An expectation that if everyone could operate with an abundance mentality and not a scarcity one, there would be enough available to meet everyone’s needs.

In much the way that Paul talks about, I have learned that scarcity or abundance is more of a condition of the heart than a physical reality. It is a posture of the heart and the way I am supposed to approach everything I have and not just what I have defined as extra.

The verses above talk about giving out of abundance and the fact that whatever resources are expected to be depleted, will be replenished. 

We don’t have to hold and hoard, but share.

In as much as our mind goes to money or other physical resources when we talk about concepts like this, I think the way it most largely plays out is in the area of energy, time, encouragement, and love of others. If I am spent, weary, and not confident or fulfilled, there is no overflow for me to offer to others.

If I am not confident in my identity, certain of the way I am loved, and clear about my roles and responsibilities, my ability to offer any of that to others is negligible. And if my role as a leader is to clarify, encourage, celebrate, and bestow identity or focus on each individual role player, my empty cup is a big problem.

Consider

• Are you operating out of overflow or would you say that your reserves are pretty depleted?
• Does your life feel like you are standing in the middle of a raging river of God’s provision and goodness?
• Or does it feel like you are more of a spectator with barely more than a toe in the water?
• What is it going to take you to wade out into the “deeper" or the “more”? To risk trusting what Jesus said about abundance?

Narrow

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

…narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

- Jesus of Nazareth

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This story begins almost 20 years ago. A man with a wife of 11 years, a son of 10 years of age, and two daughters of 7 and 4. The protagonist in this story is a banker managing a large investment portfolio (10 digits worth) with a carefully constructed spreadsheet of his future net worth (7 digits worth).

He is on track. Everything is happening according to plan. Numbers don’t lie, correct?  Well, at least they don’t, until they do.  Because the scoreboard our protagonist is trying to light up is the wrong one. This one is motivated by fear, the need to be the master of his own fate, and to prove that he can do life on his own.

Even his Christian faith has become contrived. A system of organization and order. A way to make him feel like he has it all figured out and a system to keep him from really feeling and experiencing the uncertainty and the glory found there. The faith required to live there.

This hero’s journey is assaulted. It gets turned upside down. Everything gets rocked. Faith fails.  Marriage crumbles. His unhappiness and discontent are felt by the ministries he is a part of, the children that he wanted to do better with than he had known as a boy, and the woman of his dreams.

But in a pivotal four day trip to Colorado, he encounters a guide, who takes him on a simple journey that he is still exploring almost 20 years later. 

The journey costs him everything to gain everything.

There is no longer the banking career and managing 10 digits.

There is no spreadsheet with the accumulated wealth of 7 digits either.

But there is abundant life.

A fully integrated career where personal, professional, and spiritual all operate seamlessly.

A much deeper, abiding, and true faith.

A restored marriage and a new concept of "father" for his kids.

And work that is playing a small role in bringing clarity, purpose, and success to leaders, the people they lead, and the organizations they manage.

This protagonist has been able to stare down his antagonist (although he whispers lies continuously) and find a new way to live. He is humbled and honored to receive confirmation of how different things are…how different he is.

Recently, his now 22-year-old daughter (who was once the 4-year-old mentioned above) was interviewing for a job. The company told her that they receive 5 resumes a day from girls just like her who have just graduated from college and are looking for work.

They never interviewed one of them…until now.

Not only did she warrant an interview, but they were so captivated by her character, the way she talked about her life, what she valued and how she saw the world, that the interviewer gathered other co-workers to hear what she had to say.  

When they asked her how she became that way, she said…

“I was raised in a family that valued my character over my accomplishments.”

The reality is that this protagonist’s journey, like all of ours, doesn’t end with his own life, but extends into the generations that follow. This protagonist got to witness the joy, pride, and excitement of the next generation of his life talk about her experience of being seen, heard, and honored.

This protagonist smiled and laughed so hard that the only place the happiness could get out was through his eyes. Tears of joy that he simply didn’t know were possible a mere few years ago.

Consider

• What scoreboard are you trying to light up?
• How invigorated, fulfilled, or full of life are you as you pursue that scoreboard?
• What will you pass on to the subsequent generations of your children or those you are leading?
• Are you ready to go on a journey that will cost you everything to gain everything?

Excavate

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” 

- Jesus of Nazareth

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Our kids enjoy a show called Expedition Unknown on the Travel Channel. Every episode has the incredibly likable everyman Josh Gates taking us into the great unknown mysteries: the origins of Stonehenge, the Mayan lost city of Gold, and even the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant. 

He is often digging for and unearthing “treasure”. And I say that in quotations because what he typically finds looks more like a rock, a lump of clay, a shred of wood, or a piece of broken off something. Of course, once it is cleaned up, sourced, and attached to story, myth, or legend, it takes on inestimable value.

It is the same with your company and your life. 

Most companies we encounter have some version of core values and they are incredible noble words: integrity, honesty, teamwork, etc.  Fantastic words that nearly every company would identify with and wouldn’t differentiate a company from any other.

Lencioni taught us that these are permission-to-play values. Sort of contrived or “duh” values.  Because a starting point or sort of assumed baseline of operating as a successful business should include all of those. It is hard for a team to rally around those kinds of values, own them personally, or provide the differentiating power that real specific values provide.

When we are trying to arrive at a set of powerful and unique values to define an organization, we do a deep excavation of true company culture, the best and worst employee experiences, the things their customers celebrate about their engagement with them, and we walk all the way back through a company’s story.

We are all a collective sum of the experiences we’ve had…both the good and the bad. The overcoming and even the redemption of those experiences is where our true treasure is found.  

“Every past experience is preparation for some future opportunity.  God doesn’t just redeem our souls.  He also redeems our experiences.  And not just the good ones.  He redeems the bad ones too—especially the bad ones.  How? By cultivating character, developing gifts, and teaching lessons that cannot be learned any other way.”

— Mark Batterson

If we are going to arrive at something powerful, unique, and interesting - something that clarifies, motivates, and inspires our team - our values can’t be borrowed from the short list that every other company uses.

We’ve got to dig that stuff up, clean it off, and understand how it powerfully differentiates us from all others who do what we do.  

Several of our clients are in the process of wanting to aggressively grow their business. We are using the StoryBrand framework I am trained in to help them reintroduce themselves to the market. They are not only feeling more powerful through the differentiating clarity of their values, they are using them to more confidently offer their value proposition to a bigger audience.

One client texted me after a key meeting with an influencer. He said that he differentiated his work through the articulation of the values he had excavated.  The person he met with was taken by the values and said they were a great way to describe the unique quality of his work.

This client isn’t a fan of business development and wasn’t super excited about the plan we laid out to monetize his new organizational clarity into new business. But he just told me that the meeting above was his fifth of many. They have all gone well and he is beginning to find them invigorating.  

How great is that?

Real, deeply embedded values - once articulated - bring clarity, provide momentum, and are the pathway to doing more of what you do in even better ways. Watching leaders feel more powerful about what they are doing and leveraging it to do more of the business they desire to do is a really glorious thing to watch.

Consider

• What values are core to your organization?
• How did you come up with them?
• Was it a collaborative team experience or was it something you did on your own?
• It is rooted in your story, your history, and the experiences of your employees and customers?
• Are they powerfully motivating and focusing for your organization?  They should be.